Evergreen Neruda

"Perhaps not to be is to be without your being,

without your going, that cuts noon light

like a blue flower, without your passing

later through fog and stones,

without the torch you lift in your hand

that others may not see as golden,

that perhaps no one believed blossomed

the glowing origin of the rose,

without, in the end, your being, your coming

suddenly, inspiringly, to know my life,

blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze:

and it follows that I am, because you are:

it follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we:

and, because of love, you will, I will,

We will, come to be.

('Perhaps not to be is to be without your being' - Pablo Neruda)
"I like it when you're quiet. It's as if you weren't here now,

and you heard me from a distance, and my voice couldn't reach you.

It's as if your eyes had flown away from you, and as if

your mouth were closed because I leaned to kiss you.

Just as all living things are filled with my soul.

you emerge from all living things filled with the soul of me.

It's as if, a butterfly in dreams, you were my soul,

and as if you were the soul's word, melancholy.

I like it when you're quiet. It's as if you'd gone away now,

And you'd become the keening, the butterfly's insistence,

And you heard me from a distance and my voice didn't reach you.

It's then that what I want is to be quiet with your silence.

It's then that what I want is to speak to you your silence

in a speech as clear as lamplight, as plain as a gold ring.

You are quiet like the night, and like the night you're star-lit.

Your silences are star-like, they're a distant and a simple thing.

I like it when you're quiet. It's as if you weren't here now.

As if you were dead now, and sorrowful, and distant.

A word then is sufficient, or a smile, to make me happy,

Happy that it seems so certain that you're present."

('I like it when you are quiet' - Pablo Neruda)